THE REACH OF WAR: PROTECTING TROOPS; Along With Prayers, Families Send Armor

By NEELA BANERJEE and JOHN KIFNER; Carolyn Marshall contributed reporting for this article.

Published: October 30, 2004

When the 1544th Transportation Company of the Illinois National Guard was preparing to leave for Iraq in February, relatives of the soldiers offered to pay to weld steel plates on the unit's trucks to protect against roadside bombs. The Army told them not to, because it would provide better protection in Iraq, relatives said.

Seven months later, many of the company's trucks still have no armor, soldiers and relatives said, despite running some of the most dangerous missions in Iraq and incurring the highest rate of injuries and deaths among the Illinois units deployed there.

''This problem is very extensive,'' said Paul Rieckhoff, a former infantry platoon leader with the Florida National Guard in Iraq who now runs an organization called Operation Truth, an advocacy group for soldiers and veterans.

Though soldiers of all types have complained about equipment in Iraq, part-timers in the National Guard and Reserve say that they have a particular disadvantage because they start off with outdated or insufficient gear. They have been deployed with faulty radios, unreliable trucks and, most alarmingly for many, a shortage of soundly armored vehicles in a land regularly convulsed by roadside attacks, according to soldiers, relatives and outside military experts.

After many complaints when the violence in Iraq accelerated late last year, the military acknowledged there had been shortages, in part because of the rapid deployments. But the Army contends that it has moved quickly to get better equipment to Iraq over the last year.

''War is a come-as-you-are party,'' said Lt. Gen. C.V. Christianson, the Army's deputy chief of staff for logistics, in an interview yesterday. ''The way a unit was resourced when someone rang the bell is the way it showed up.

''As we saw this become a more enduring commitment, those in the next rotation had full protective gear, like the newest body armor,'' he said. General Christianson acknowledged, however, that more work needed to be done to protect vehicles in particular and that broader changes were needed so that the Army and Reserve would be better prepared in the future.

Not all National Guard units are complaining about their equipment. The soldiers in Company C of the Arkansas Army National Guard's First Battalion, 153rd Infantry Regiment, have operated in one of the riskiest parts of Baghdad since they arrived in April.

Capt. Thomas J. Foley, 29, the company commander, and his soldiers bragged in recent interviews that their equipment, from Bradley fighting vehicles to armored personnel carriers, was on par or better than what many regular Army units in Iraq now have.

The improvements are of little solace to many soldiers' families. Progress has been made, but it has been slow and inconsistent, soldiers, families and other military observers said. When 18 reservists in Iraq refused an order to deliver fuel on Oct. 13, they cited the poor condition of their trucks and the lack of armed escorts in a particularly dangerous area.

Families Buy Equipment

Before the 103rd Armor Regiment of the Pennsylvania National Guard left in late February, some relatives bought those soldiers new body armor to supplant the Vietnam-era flak jackets that had been issued. The mother of Sgt. Sherwood Baker, a member of the regiment who was killed in April, bought a global positioning device after being told that the Army said his truck should have one but would not supply it.

And before Karma Kumlin's husband left with his Minnesota National Guard unit in February, the soldiers spent about $200 each on radios that they say have turned out to be more reliable -- although less secure -- than the Army's. Only recently, Ms. Kumlin said, has her husband gotten a metal shield for the gunner's turret he regularly mans, after months of asking.

''This just points to an extreme lack of planning ,'' said Ms. Kumlin, who is 31 and a student. ''My husband is part of the second wave that went to Iraq.''

Critics who say that disparities and shortages persist fault the Pentagon for incorrectly assuming that American troops would return home quickly after the war. As a result, they say, little was done to equip and train the thousands of National Guard and Reserve soldiers who were called to serve in Iraq and who now make up 40 percent of American troops there.

''I am really surprised that planners relied on the best-case military scenario,'' said Jonathon Turley, a military historian at George Washington University Law School who wrote last year about shortages of body armor. He was then deluged with e-mail messages from soldiers complaining of such shortages, 90 percent of them from the National Guard and Reserve.

Military officials strongly dispute assertions that reservists and National Guard troops have training and equipment inferior to that of the regular Army. ''The resourcing and equipping of the National Guard today is indistinguishable from that of active duty soldiers,'' said Lt. Gen. H Steven Blum. ''In no time in history have soldiers gone to battle as well equipped as they have gone into Iraq.''